fumbling visions, transmitted by television

I feel like you can sort of tell how long (or not) someone has existed in fannish spaces by how outraged they get about things like this. Like rings in a tree trunk lol. I've been in so many fandoms. At least one, but often multiple at the same time, since I was a teenager. I've seen just. Everything.

Sex pollen. Mpreg. Incest. Monster fucking. Tentacles. Pairings like Snape/Hermione that would be crazy abusive and illegal if they were real. Wild kinks. The babygirlification of all kinds of villains. So much RPF (the 'I sincerely believe they are secretly a couple' kind and the 'this is fictional but it's fun to imagine they're in love' kind.)

I came across this Tumblr post and here's why people blaming the fans for the writers fatal flaw is just wrong.

And now I'll get to the most unpopular opinion I've ever shared online - fully aware that what I've already said very few people on here would agree with: I don't think it's Rob Thomas who killed the show with his ill-adviced decision, it's the fans who did that. Not that they are not aware of it, but they still refuse to take the blame for it, as if there could not have been any other reaction. And clearly they don't regret it. After they paid to bring Veronica Mars back once before. They collectively decided that season 4 was a crime against the fandom and that it never happened. Therefore making it impossible for anyone who did not feel the same way to get more content and have some closure. I know I don't get to be mad about that, but it is sad. And I've been on the other side of this a few times and stopped watching a show after a certain point, but that never triggered a cancellation. I've seen favorite characters killed off many times without it ever leading to a fandom turning hostile like that, sometimes even ripping everything else apart about the show. And it's not even like Veronica Mars was a cosy show where people didn't die. It was neo noir. It started out with her solving the murder of her best friend ffs. So, how did this happen? How did one character's death kill the show? Was it because he was the main love interest over more than a decade? Why does it now feel like he was more important than the protagonist? Or was it maybe because the fans campaigned for it's return and even funded the movie? Was it because they felt more invested in a way and later betrayed although they did not pay for the last season to get made?

I know this take circulates a lot: “The fans killed Veronica Mars. If they hadn’t reacted so strongly to Season 4, we’d have gotten more.”

But after watching this happen over and over, across shows I love, shows that shaped me, shows that built entirely new corners of fandom culture. I just don’t buy it.

Fans aren’t killing shows. Writers are breaking the emotional contract, torching the narrative spine, and then blaming the audience for the smoke.

And if Veronica Mars were the only example, maybe we could write it off. But this specific heartbreak, this implosion of trust, has now happened on too many shows, in too many fandoms, with too similar a pattern to chalk up to “one overreacting audience.”

It didn’t start with Season 4. It didn’t start with Logan Echolls. And it didn’t end there.

It’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s Game of Thrones. It’s The 100. And on and on.

This is a cultural pattern. A breaking point between audiences and creators, and VM is just the case study where people still argue about who struck the match.

The pattern is the same every time: the writers kill the relationship they spent years telling us mattered most.

This is the part critics pretend not to understand.

Fandom doesn’t melt down because a character dies. Characters die constantly in television, and people grieve them, yell about them, move on. They melt down when a character dies in a way that breaks the story’s thesis. Let's take a deeper look:

Veronica Mars: Logan Echolls

Years of storytelling, marketing, PR, revival hype, and arc-building told us:

Logan is Veronica’s person. He’s the love story that grows with her. This relationship is the heart of the show.

Season 4 then kills him in the last 90 seconds as a plot device. Not a turning point, not a thematic evolution, just a twist that contradicts everything the show told us about her healing.

The Handmaid’s Tale: Nick Blaine

Four seasons of narrative work (and two books) told us:

Nick is June’s equal, mirror, moral counterweight, and match. Their love is radical, raw, complicated, feminist, and central.

Then Seasons 5 and 6 decide:

Actually, punish him. Actually, flatten him. Actually, the story is about motherhood, not womanhood or desire. Actually, June belongs with the safe man.

That isn’t a character arc. That’s an ideological pivot.

Game of Thrones: Daenerys Targaryen

Eight seasons told us:

Daenerys is the heart of the myth. She breaks chains. She frees people. She’s the emotional and moral center of the show’s grand design.

The final three episodes say:

Forget that. She snaps because… trauma? lineage? vibes? The woman who liberated millions is actually a tyrant.

A series that built itself on emotional logic ends on plot logic. The single most disorienting pivot a story can make.

When the ending contradicts what the story was, fans don’t feel shocked. They feel gaslit.

Killing the love interest isn’t the issue. Killing the thesis is.

This is the part nobody wants to talk about, because it forces a reckoning with the power and legitimacy of fandom interpretation.

Logan wasn’t just Veronica’s boyfriend. Nick wasn’t just June’s romantic partner. Daenerys wasn’t just another lead.

These characters were:

thematic mirrors

emotional anchors

narrative engines

symbolic structures

the emotional grammar of the show

and the embodiment of the protagonist’s arc

You don’t just rip those out. Not without re-breaking everything around them. It’s like pulling the keystone from a bridge and then blaming drivers for falling into the river.

Why does this keep happening? Because TV writers mistake cynicism for prestige.

This is the actual disease that keeps killing fan-beloved shows:

Prestige = tragedy

Prestige = subversion

Prestige = women alone

Prestige = punishing love

Prestige = nihilism masquerading as maturity

It’s a worldview that sees romance arcs, emotional continuity, loyal love interests, or morally gray partners as “cheap,” “fan service,” or “too soapy.” And because of that mindset, writers keep doing one of two things:

1. They kill the love interest to seem edgy or surprising.

2. They rewrite the protagonist or their partner beyond recognition.

And sometimes both. Either way, the show loses the very thing that made it groundbreaking. The fans didn’t kill Veronica Mars. They mourned what the creator killed first. If a fandom was powerful enough to:

campaign for a return

fund a movie

keep the discourse alive for a decade

pull the show into the 2010s streaming era

…then maybe, just maybe, they had a point about the story’s emotional core.

People didn’t walk away because Logan died. They walked away because his death dismantled the show’s moral vocabulary.

Just like:

People walked away from The Handmaid’s Tale, especially 6x10, because they dismantled the show’s feminist thesis and punished the very arc they built around love, agency, and liberation. (Ahem Hulu's TT because I will be shocked if it's not heading for a similar exit.)

People walked away from Game of Thrones because the finale dismantled eight years of character logic and replaced it with plot convenience.

This isn’t “toxicity.” This is narrative literacy.

Fans understood the assignment better than the people writing the final chapters. The truth is this: fans don’t kill shows. Shows kill themselves when they decide the audience was wrong about what mattered.

And here's the irony that never gets talked about: Writers taught us what mattered.

They built these love stories. They crafted these arcs. They centered these relationships. They marketed these dynamics. They put these characters in promos, posters, finales, interviews, season-long narratives. They told us these bonds mattered.

So when they then turn around and say:

Actually, wrong. Actually, silly of you to care. Actually, this was never the point.

Of course people walk.

It’s not immaturity. It’s not entitlement. It’s not “fandom killing the show.”

In Knives Out, a compassionate, ethical young woman treats everyone around her with generosity, and the people around her repeatedly try to take advantage of her kindness to force her into losing the fortune that was gifted to her by a dear friend. There, justice means that she keeps the fortune and decides that actually, she doesn't have to be kind and giving to people who've proven themselves assholes.

In Glass Onion, a woman loses her sister to a gang of wealthy, successful people who've sacrificed their principles for the sake of ambition and ego. There, justice means that everyone involved will be made notorious: whatever their other accomplishments, they will forever be known for being complicit in the burning of the most famous painting in history.

In Wake Up Dead Man, the church takes advantage of a young girl's loyalty and faith to place her under a lifelong burden and fill her with guilt, shame, and hatred. Justice means helping her understand what was done to her and the women around her, and giving her compassion so she can find peace.

This is cool because it means the movies contradict each other! The compassionate justice of Wake Up Dead Man would be totally misplaced in Knives Out, and so would the toppling-monuments justice of Glass Onion. And because each movie has something different to say, they all stand on their own and feel fresh.

Doctor Who fans when the show loses most of its budget: